Party Politics - Every vote counts

The skeptical reader will wonder if the case here is not being made too
strongly. After all, foreign policy issues seldom decide elections in the
United States. Does it not follow that American diplomacy and party
politics must have only minor influence on each other? Not necessarily. It
is true that in the United States, as in other countries, voters tend to
give their chief attention to domestic matters. But foreign policy
questions, though of less importance, have in most years been significant
enough to merit the attention of practicing politicians. The professionals
in politics have always realized that when domestic issues are in the
forefront, diplomatic questions can still shift a few votes in swing
districts in critical states. This can mean the difference between victory
and defeat for a national ticket or decide control of Congress. That,
essentially, has always been the politician's interpretation of the
politics of American foreign policy—both for those who are in and
those who are out of office.

This is still true and can be seen in the care with which presidential
aspirants take on Israeli questions and the related matter of the Jewish
vote. Small in national totals, this vote is critically important in New
York, California, and other states with major urban centers. Even in 1948,
Clark Clifford and other Truman aides were thinking partly about electoral
politics in urging the president to extend recognition to the new State of
Israel. Since 1876, Clifford knew, every winner of a presidential election
had carried New York State, where in the 1940s Jews constituted 14 percent
of the population. Extending recognition to Israel would help deliver the
state to Truman in November and could also help the president in other
states with sizable Jewish populations. The Emergency Committee on Zionist
Affairs, and later the American Zionist Council and the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee—the latter self-described as "the
most powerful, best-run, and effective foreign policy interest group in
Washington"—proved effective in exploiting the potential
power of the Jewish vote to gain continued material and diplomatic backing
for Israel.

True, the close U.S.–Israel relationship after 1948 was the product
of many things. Israel had the strongest military force in the Middle
East, and there were good geostrategic reasons why Washington sought to
maintain close ties with Israel and work together on matters of common
interest. Moreover, the convictions of evangelical Christians, as well as
the feelings of other Americans touched by the courage of Israel, meant
that a broad cross-section of Americans could be counted on to back firm
U.S. support for Israel's security. Nevertheless, it would be
foolish to deny that electoral imperatives influenced American policy
toward the Middle East at all points after the late 1940s.

Likewise, America's policy toward Cuba after 1959 was deeply
affected by the influence of the Cuban-American community in South Florida
and the desire of presidential contenders to win Florida's sizable
chunk of electoral votes. In October 1976, for example, Cyrus Vance, then
a foreign policy adviser to Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign,
advised that "the time has come to move away from our past policy
of isolation. Our boycott has proved ineffective, and there has been a
decline of Cuba's export of revolution in the region." If
the United States lifted the long-standing embargo on food and medicine,
Vance speculated, the Castro government might reduce its level of support
for the leftist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in
Angola. Carter was sympathetic, but he acted cautiously in the campaign.
"There were no votes to be won, and many to be lost, by indicating
friendliness toward Castro," the historian Gaddis Smith wrote of
Carter's thinking. Subsequent presidents would encounter the same
dilemma when they contemplated a change in Cuba policy: the need to weigh
an alteration to a failed and indeed counterproductive embargo policy
against the perceived power of the militantly anti-Castro Cuban American
National Foundation (CANF) to sway the Florida vote.

These kinds of calculations were nothing new in American politics. From
1865 to 1895, for example, most Americans were too absorbed in goings-on
at home to spare much time for over-seas developments. Voter attention
revolved around such domestic concerns as the reconstruction of the South,
sagging prices, and recurrent depressions. Nevertheless, national
politicians labored hard on the diplomatic sections of their party
platforms, and candidates spent time outlining or camouflaging their
opinions on foreign policy. The reason was plain. The Republicans and
Democrats were evenly balanced, and presidential and congressional
elections were decided by razor-thin margins. The least slip, even on
diplomatic positions, might mean the loss of a handful of votes, which
could spell calamity at the polls.

It is well to remember that, when domestic questions rule, they often
relate closely to foreign policy. This has been the case with tariffs,
immigration, witch hunts against radicals, and, in the early twenty-first
century, with agricultural prices and production and trade deals such as
the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994. The relation of these
problems to party politics—which is often very close—again
draws diplomacy into the domestic political arena.